Reading Blogs, Video Grow Most; Email, News, Shopping Most Popular

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Visiting blogs, watching online videos and making phone calls online posted the biggest year-to-year increases in the number of users among internet activities; however, email, newsgathering and personal shopping remain the most widely used internet activities among U.S. adults, according to responses from Mediamark Research Inc.'s recently released fall 2006 survey.

Some 11.4 percent of adults said they had watched an online video in the previous 30 days - a year-to-year increase of 123.7 percent, according to MRI. Those who report they visit blogs increased 163.9 percent during the same period, to a total of 6.7 percent of the adult population. And 2.6 percent of respondents report making a phone call online, an increase of 197.7 percent.

Nevertheless, those three internet activities remain the least-used by the adult U.S. population. The internet activities performed by the greatest number of adults are emailing (70.5 percent), obtaining news (40.2 percent) and personal shopping (34.2 percent).

Looking over a four-year period, the biggest increases in the number of adults conducting an internet activity were for making a purchase for personal use (up 57.7 percent, to 34.2 percent of the adult population), making a purchase for business use (up 51.5 percent, to 10.7 percent of adults), obtaining real estate information (up 36.6 percent, to 12.3 percent of the population) and visiting a TV network's or TV show's website (up 35.1 percent, to 14.1 percent of the population).